My first book, Social Media for Family Historians, was published in late 2010 by Unlock The Past. It explains what social media is; what use it is; and introduces you to more than 25 social media sites that can help family historians to communicate, share and collaborate with other family historians and with their own families.
It covers new ways to communicate such as Sykpe and SecondLife; social networking sites such as Facebook and GenealogyWise; blogs and microblogs such as Twitter; sites … [Read more...]

Today is Follow An Archive day on Twitter. Twitter users around the world are tweeting about their favourite archives, and archives around the world are tweeting about themselves, using the hashtag #followanarchive.
I've learned about a lot of archives I didn't know about, and a lot that I did know about but didn't know they used Twitter. Here are a couple of examples:
@BaselineLPMA NSW Land and Property Management Authority Heritage Information
website at http://www.baseline.nsw.gov.au, … [Read more...]

Yesterday I received an email about a new website called Sirius Genealogy 2.0. The email said, in part:
Sirius Genealogy 2.0 (SG2) is pleased to announce that we have completed our transformation from a simple blog, into a complete online community for Amateur & Professional Genealogists. The old blog has been shut down and a new membership site has been launched and is publicly available. Membership is FREE! In addition to the general community atmosphere, SG2 has developed numerous Google … [Read more...]

Elizabeth Shown Mills, author of Evidence! : citation & analysis for the family historian and Evidence explained : citing history sources from artifacts to cyberspace has rewritten the definition of "Genealogy" on Wikipedia, or at least the first two paragraphs. Her text, as she informed* the mailing list of the Association of Professional Genealogists, was as follows:
"Genealogy (from Greek: ?e?ea, genea, "family"; and ?????, logos, "knowledge"; often misspelled "geneology."[1]) is the … [Read more...]

There are advantages and disadvantages to leaving your name, surnames-of-interest, and email address on the many genealogy forums and load-your-family-tree websites.
Advantages
The main advantage is, of course, that you might connect with someone who can give you vital information. That is the reason we sign up to these things in the first place. And don't be discouraged if you don't get a response straight away. The crucial person who has the family bible, or knows who has it, may not read … [Read more...]